anorexic qualities and should stop asap?

ok, I informed a friend of my switch over to paleo, and he asked me what it was and I told him. He then asked about how many calories am I getting per day, I told him I don't count, but if I'd have to guess, I'd say 850. He then told me this is not healthy and I should stop asap.

I tried to inform him I'm getting enough nutrition, and high protein, low carbs, etc. But he's still resilient. What should I do to further explain that what I am doing will not lead to anorexia?

Starvation can induce a euphoric high in which a person's appetite is completely blunted. Often, anorexics initially feel no hunger as they starve. It's only as the months draw on that the hunger starts to kick in and the anorexia becomes impossible to keep up. Which is when many anorexic then begin to binge, which can turn into bulimia. At least that's what happened in my n=1 experience.

A CW calculator designed by CW doctors or nutritionalist which is programed to determine the amount of SAD calories you need to eat....no thanks. Calories in calories out....no thank you. I used to believe I needed a predetermined amount until I tracked them for 4 months.

I would agree, it seems that some or many anorexics have lost touch with balanced eating drives. But on the flip side, sounds like the person in question is eating often and healthy in general, not skipping or avoiding meals nor making excuses not to eat. So, does not seem like your typical case of pathological anorexia. Could be undereating, but that also I think remains to be seen.

Yes! This is what I was going to say. Cals from fat count as caloric 'intake' in a way. Also, definition of anorexia can vary wildly depending on source. SOme sources use the word to simply mean 'not hungry' or 'lessened hunger.' Others use it to mean not eating when you need to eat to be healthy and thus becoming too thin. I don't think we yet have enough evidence to say you are anorexic or not. I think part of what you need to look at as well is your energy levels, how you feel, etc.

i think most chicken even ones raised on pasture get some grain so i'd say its more O6 than O3. but if you get your wild fish often and fish oil daily and you don't eat grains yourself, i wouldn't be too concerned. good chart of conventional / not grass fed stuff's o3-o6 content. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9mNHNOMqaqM/SfDcJWRbLjI/AAAAAAAACRg/cvjLcPdaLpA/s1600-h/Omega6-Omega3GraphFix.jpg

In agreement. Eat until you are full, eat until you are full, eat until you are full. This is not a diet. Just don't eat bad food that makes it hard for you to tell when you are full. That's the basic idea. Beyond that you might count some calories or some protein grams or look at your vitamins and minerals just as a check. But make all that auxiliary to the main thing, which is: eating real food until you get full. And let David's last comment be another auxiliary: if you have a history of eating disorders you'll also need vigilance about convincing yourself you're full when you're not.

At 5' 8" and 240#, I would hardly call her anorexic! I'm 240#, 6' male and very obese! But the calories (if correct) are not enough to sustain a healthy hormone function. Please be more careful with your posts, as "anorexic" is an emotionally loaded label - and calling someone that - whether unfounded or not - is simply heartless.

paleo keeps our appetites in check so its easy to consume little and feel satisfied. i think its unfair to call her anarexic, i think she just needs to figure out how much she is able to eat while still losing weight. good thing about paleo is you dont need to restrict cals like on a low fat diet because we use insulin response and ketosis to burn fat instead of starvation.

its like 4 chicken thighs. i can eat those in like 10 minutes. believe me hitting 140 grams a day is not going to stunt weight loss--if anything the thermogenic effect will help it along. plus, 140 grams of protein is 560 calories. Now you just need to get 1000 somewhere--probably from 100 grams of fat (=7 tblspoons of olive oil) and the rest in carbs.

Brittni, I commented on gillie's answer below, but one more piece of advice I'd make is to drop the fruit until you are closer to your ideal weight--fruit isn't really necessary to life and its real sugary for someone with weight goals. Not trying to make you eat less, tho. I would find ways to add more fat to your diet, maybe some lard or olive oil or coconut oil based salad dressings, and add some more protein-shoot for 140 grams a day.

this is exactly the comment that i would have put up. since you have some weight you are trying to lose, keep carbs between 50-100. Also I would up your protein to 1 gram per pound of lean mass to start so you can get some calories that way. If you don't know your BF% you could just ballpark at say 140 grams of protein a day. Then, add some fats to your diet to make up more of your caloric range. Might want to avoid dairy in weightloss mode but find some good lard--it digests easier than coconut oil and its high in Vit. D! Good luck!!

You had me at "Toba catastrophe" - lol! Melissa, you are both obscure and erudite. But I gotta agree on both the high-fat dairy (cream/cheese/butter) and buying large/having lots of good food around. BTW, I don't think anyone around here is gonna start calling "The Lady of the (paleo) Lake" a heretic anytime soon!

well, when I said that, it was a ballpark average. I'm mainly trying to convince the guy I'm doing my body good. I'd say it's more around 1100. I get up, and have 2-3 eggs and some fried tomatoes, and a glass of almond milk. I would have a snack about 10, and that's usually an apple or two. Then I'd have a lettuce wrap, which includes lettuce, meef strips, and a lemon-pepper sauce I make. Then about 3 I have some celery, and for dinner, I usually have whatever meat is in my freezer, and spinach salad, and some broccoli/carrots, and if I get hungry after, half of a fruit. Always water or tea.

First, I think that more information is needed here, such as the types of food that you are eating and percentage of protein/fat/carbs that you are consuming. 850 calories does seem like a very low amount, and one that might not be healthy.
Second, Anorexia is defined as (a quick grab from Wikipedia) "an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight, and an obsessive fear of gaining weight due to a distorted self image. It is a serious mental illness." Perhaps your friend is concerned about malnutrition, but anorexia is a different story. More info, please?

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Answers

Paleo food is not unhealthy; the amount of calories you are taking in is unhealthy. You need to eat more food. I'm sure you hear that a lot. Haha. Assuming you are a woman (since your name is "Brittni" and I can't see your gender on your profile), you should not be getting any less than 1200 calories a day. Minimum. If you are active and over 4 feet tall, you should probably be getting more.

I get probably 2500 calories a day on a regular day, and that is low for me. I'm currently working on finding ways to increase my caloric-intake.

Use this to figure out how many calories you need per day. You don't have to tell us your info if you don't want to, but it's important you increase your intake if you need to.

A CW calculator designed by CW doctors or nutritionalist which is programed to determine the amount of SAD calories you need to eat....no thanks. Calories in calories out....no thank you. I used to believe I needed a predetermined amount until I tracked them for 4 months.

I suggest measuring for a little while (using fit day or my net diary) just to be sure you're getting enough fat and enough protein (but not too much) and to ensure you're not getting too much carbs. Mark Sisson has a good guide here:

PROTEIN: At a minimum you need .5 grams of protein per pound of lean mass/per day on average to maintain your ???structure???. If you are moderately active you need .7 or .8, and if you are an active athlete you need as much as 1 gram of protein per pound of lean mass. That???s at a minimum, but it???s on a daily average.

CARBS: 100-150 grams of carbohydrate per day is plenty to keep you out of ketosis (and ketosis is NOT a bad thing) but away from storing the excess as fat if you are the least bit active. ...if you are looking to lose body fat, keeping carbs to under 80 grams per day will help immensely in lowering insulin and taking fat out of storage.

Fill in the rest with good fats like lard, butter, coconut oil, coconut milk, olive oil (not cooked), and if you can tolerate them, nuts!

this is exactly the comment that i would have put up. since you have some weight you are trying to lose, keep carbs between 50-100. Also I would up your protein to 1 gram per pound of lean mass to start so you can get some calories that way. If you don't know your BF% you could just ballpark at say 140 grams of protein a day. Then, add some fats to your diet to make up more of your caloric range. Might want to avoid dairy in weightloss mode but find some good lard--it digests easier than coconut oil and its high in Vit. D! Good luck!!

I have a bit of an eating disordered past and I just hope you aren't looking for validation here. Unless you are obese and on an extremely restricted calorie diet, anything under 1000 is too low and you should be more in the 1200/1400 for weight loss and probably 1400/1600 for maintenance.

If you are happy eating what you are eating and just aren't hungry adding some nuts (high calories for little food mass) and/or cheese. When I'm just not hungry and need more calories, those do it quickly but still somewhat healthy.

As someone who is rarely hungry and feels satiated by a tiny amount of food, I hear you. Since going paleo my boyfriend has turned into a grandma--always telling me to "eat, eat, eat!" There are a few simple things I would suggest, all of which have made a big difference to me. To echo Dave S, add almond butter or cream cheese to your celery snack. Almond butter or full fat yogurt to your apple snack. If you are feeling more adventurous, get a liver pate that you like and eat it on celery or cucumber slices for in between meals. If you eat steamed veggies, add LOTS of butter. Make sure the evening salad is dressed well with some good fats--i make a warm bacon grease/blueberry vinaigrette dressing to drizzle on spinach and it is delicious. Eat a spoonful of coconut oil or take a shot of olive oil occasionally if you can stomach it (these make me feel really good, especially on days I can't conceive of eating more food.) Your evening meat/veggie meal could become a coconut milk based curry really easily that can be custom spiced to be pleasing to your palate. FYI-being consistent about eating more kickstarted weight loss that I wasn't even trying for...

ETA: oh! i forgot my favorite thing lately--fall soup! saute onions and garlic in fat of choice, add chicken broth/stock (i make my own from bones and scraps that i collect in a bag in the freezer), add squash or canned pumpkin (and maybe sweet potato) and spices (ginger/cinnamon/whatever) and simmer. when done puree it (a stick blender works awesome here) with heavy cream or more butter or both. i make huge batches and then reheat by the mugful as a beverage. it's a good way to add calories and nutrients without forcing yourself--kind of a savory smoothie that doesn't send your blood sugar sky high.

If you actually are that low, that's not paleo unless you are trying to emulate starving hunter-gatherers at the end of the Toba catastrophe or something. Why are you eating so little?

Call me heretic, but I'd start doing dairy ASAP. I'm pretty sure there have been points where my calories were too low, but having cheese and milk really boosts things. Then if you don't want to keep that up, sit down and make a plan for eating more paleo foods. Sometimes it's about having them on hand. Maybe buy some stuff in bulk so that you don't have any excuse to not eat? I buy large quantities of things like coconut milk on Amazon for example.

You had me at "Toba catastrophe" - lol! Melissa, you are both obscure and erudite. But I gotta agree on both the high-fat dairy (cream/cheese/butter) and buying large/having lots of good food around. BTW, I don't think anyone around here is gonna start calling "The Lady of the (paleo) Lake" a heretic anytime soon!

Contra most of the other answers here, I don't think it's possible to say that you're definitely eating too few calories and need to ensure you're intaking as many calories as your daily needs if you've got a BMI of over 30. Presumably a good number of calories are coming from stored energy, so that even if you're only consuming 850-1100 calories, a substantially higher number are coming from released body fat, as is natural if you're eating healthily.

So long as you're eating whatever amount it is that you're eating because that's all you feel like physically eating, then there's no reason to think that you're anorexic. From the average daily intake of food described it doesn't sound like you were eating 850 anyway, but if you were, presumably this would be unsustainable. The key is surely is eating until you're full, with little cause for deviating beyond this. So long as you're going to be eating so few calories, then the most important thing is making sure you can meet your requirements within those calories. On paper 80g of protein should be fine, though bear in mind that while you're losing weight your body will tend to consume it's own resources, and so you may need a slightly higher protein intake than you would normally.

N.B. If you're a past anorexic, then you might well want to be very sceptical of the idea that you naturally only want to eat a very small amount of food, but there's no reason why eating a small amount of food per se will give you anorexia. Naturally, if you're aiming to lose weight it might well be very tempting and easy to try to convince yourself that you don't want to eat, but so long as you're constantly vigilant that you're not doing that, there's no intrinsic reason why you should eat more for the sake of it. There is some argument that if you maintain a large caloric deficit over the long term then your body will compensate by 'lowering metabolism,' but if this is a perfectly voluntary result of raised body fat raising leptin, then intuitively, one might not expect this to occur.

Yes! This is what I was going to say. Cals from fat count as caloric 'intake' in a way. Also, definition of anorexia can vary wildly depending on source. SOme sources use the word to simply mean 'not hungry' or 'lessened hunger.' Others use it to mean not eating when you need to eat to be healthy and thus becoming too thin. I don't think we yet have enough evidence to say you are anorexic or not. I think part of what you need to look at as well is your energy levels, how you feel, etc.

In agreement. Eat until you are full, eat until you are full, eat until you are full. This is not a diet. Just don't eat bad food that makes it hard for you to tell when you are full. That's the basic idea. Beyond that you might count some calories or some protein grams or look at your vitamins and minerals just as a check. But make all that auxiliary to the main thing, which is: eating real food until you get full. And let David's last comment be another auxiliary: if you have a history of eating disorders you'll also need vigilance about convincing yourself you're full when you're not.

There is a difference between an eating disorder and undereating. Some people feel full and satisfied on low calories. Their appetite adapts to chronic calorie restriction. You are not anorexic if you feel full and satisfied. Any diet is going to be "undereating" anyway. What matters is not how many calories but how much nutrition is in those calories. And that includes macronutrients, not just vitamins and minerals. It looks like you could use more fat in your diet, like nuts. If you can find a natural nut butter (peanuts as a legume aren't considered paleo though), you could add that. Just stay away from anything with hydrogenated oils. Or you could eat more meat, if you eat fish you get a lot more Omega-3's.

It pains me to see how much "anorexia" is stretched so much to apply to people who are not anorexic. Even being very thin is grounds for being accused of anorexia. Anorexia remains a psychological disorder, and I oppose diagnoses which rely on weight, appearance or unconventional eating habits. The only reason someone is anorexic is they intentionally starve themselves to become very thin. Not accidentally consuming too little calories than they may need to get enough nutrients.

I would agree, it seems that some or many anorexics have lost touch with balanced eating drives. But on the flip side, sounds like the person in question is eating often and healthy in general, not skipping or avoiding meals nor making excuses not to eat. So, does not seem like your typical case of pathological anorexia. Could be undereating, but that also I think remains to be seen.

Starvation can induce a euphoric high in which a person's appetite is completely blunted. Often, anorexics initially feel no hunger as they starve. It's only as the months draw on that the hunger starts to kick in and the anorexia becomes impossible to keep up. Which is when many anorexic then begin to binge, which can turn into bulimia. At least that's what happened in my n=1 experience.

From your stats, your BMR would be ~1900 cals. Lets assume you are sedentary (no exercise), then you would be burning roughly 2300 per day. If you ate 1800, that would be 1# of fat loss per week. (Yes, I've read GCBC - its about a lot more than just calories - quality of food and macronutrients matter quite a bit).

At 850 per day, your metabolism will shut down - its your body's natural self-protection response. The first sign is cold hands/feet and lack of energy. You need to fire up the metobolic engine by eating more and the best fuel for that fire is saturated fat.

Your food actually looks pretty good. The almond milk is unsweetened, right? I'd actually cut back on the fruit a little bit. Add some butter or coconut oil to the eggs, have the celery with some cream cheese or almond butter. Just enough to get the calories back up to a reasonable level - don't go overboard!

Number one priority is to be healthy - the weight will normalize - and its best not to hurry it - that's generally self-defeating.

paleo keeps our appetites in check so its easy to consume little and feel satisfied. i think its unfair to call her anarexic, i think she just needs to figure out how much she is able to eat while still losing weight. good thing about paleo is you dont need to restrict cals like on a low fat diet because we use insulin response and ketosis to burn fat instead of starvation.

At 5' 8" and 240#, I would hardly call her anorexic! I'm 240#, 6' male and very obese! But the calories (if correct) are not enough to sustain a healthy hormone function. Please be more careful with your posts, as "anorexic" is an emotionally loaded label - and calling someone that - whether unfounded or not - is simply heartless.